WoW Source: Patch 5.4 Developer Round Table
Blizzard released a video that gives an overview of Patch 5.4 and then answers some of your questions.

Over 50% of Flex Raids last week had 2 or more raid sizes, so people are really making use of the flexible size feature.

Roughly the same amount of people did a flex raid last week as the number that did scenarios.

The Timeless Isle is somewhat of a template for endgame world content going forward. There might be some more structure in the future, but the general style of content that avoids pure daily quests worked well.

Adding things in the world to discover while leveling will also be a goal moving forward.

As far as storage space goes, choosing what to keep is part of the gameplay. No matter how much bag space players are given, it will always end up being full.

Heirlooms are taking up a lot of space, so a centralized storage like the one used for pets and mounts is being worked on. The toy items added in Mists of Pandaria also take up a lot of space, so a similar solution for that would also be ideal.

Siege of Orgrimmar is one of the more melee friendly raid zones that have been added recently. The devs are looking for things melee players can excel at or perks they can have without taking tools away from ranged players.

The Gnome race didn't exist when the original WoW cinematic was being worked on, which is why they didn't appear in it. There hasn't been a good opportunity to showcase gnomes in a cinematic since then.

Patch 5.4.1 will add a new Refer a Friend system. The whole process will be moved in game, rather than requiring you to visit the site in your browser. The system will give you a token which you can redeem for the new mount, one of the other mounts, or a pet.

Blizzcon will have "an exciting glimpse into the future of WoW", as well as a live raid.

Corrected an issue with Cloak and Dagger that could allow Rogues to bypass some targeting and line-of-sight restrictions.

Creatures

Evermaw's spawn is no longer tied to Dread Ship Vazuvius.

Moonfang should now always drop something when defeated.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios

Siege of Orgrimmar

Spoils of Pandaria

Corrected an issue where Spark of Life had more health than intended on Flexible difficulty.

Garrosh Hellscream

Garrosh Hellscream should no longer use Malice against players who have an Iron Star fixated on them on Heroic difficulty.

Rated Battleground Ratings Adjustments

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

As you may be aware, we recently made a change to Rated Battleground queues that makes players wait until the match has ended to queue for a new Rated Battleground, even if they had left that match. This change allowed us to close a loophole some were using to artificially inflate their ratings, but unfortunately quite a bit of abuse had already occurred by the time we implemented the fix. Our goal now is to restore as much integrity to the Rated Battleground ladders as possible, and we’ll be doing that in two key ways.

During our next maintenance we’ll be lowering all Rated Battleground personal and matchmaking ratings for those above 2200 down to 2200. The abuse was widespread to a point that many legitimate players’ ratings have been inflated just because they’ve played against those who had used the loophole to boost their rating, and so we need to get everyone back to some equal footing. But secondly we’ll be taking action against the accounts for those who knowingly and purposely abused the exploit to boost their rating, which will result in more than just their rating being reduced.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on things, and looking to take swift action for any further issues.

The Crowd Chose You Buff

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

We're not really happy with how The Crowd Chose You is working out at the moment. We're exploring a few options for exactly what we'd like to do, but we will be changing it.

what's the PTR for?
I also totally get the concern that these sorts of changes should be happening on PTR and not live. In an ideal world, they would be. Thing is, the PTR is such a different environment, especially for PvP, that we really don't see the same sort of player behaviors on the test realms that we do on live. There's a lot fewer players, and those that do test aren't worried about getting high ratings as much as they are just trying out new changes.

That makes sense, and we don't really expect players to behave any differently than they do. It just means that, sometimes, issues that crop up on PTR don't extend to live. In this case, we saw the issues cropping up on PTR, but there was a reasonable case to be made that those behaviors wouldn't work on a live environment, where players would care more about their ratings, or the higher pool of players would mean those tactics weren't as successful as often. So, we decided to give The Crowd Chose You a shot, while also starting to think about what we could do if the issues persisted.

In hindsight, sure, it would have been better if we'd done something else to begin with, instead of making the change a couple weeks into the PvP season. Ultimately, we made a bad call, which is why we're working to make some changes now. Just be aware that making those calls isn't as simple as looking at how things are on the PTR. It can be pretty difficult to decide who to listen to sometimes.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Soul Link + Unending Resolve glyph.
There's a huge difference between giving up major defensive cooldowns for a passive effect and just having a passive effect on top of everything else.

In the case the OP laid out, the Warlock is effectively sacrificing two major cooldowns: Unending Resolve, and either Demonic Sacrifice or Dark Bargain. That's a pretty hefty price to pay, and though it certainly seems to be a popular choice at the moment (and we can discuss whether or not it's too strong), it's still a choice. We like choices. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Warcraft StoryMy point is that I feel like for WoW to get exciting again we need a new storyline, new heroes and new villians that we can all love and hate.
This is not the first time I have been reading a comment like this, and it is one that I personally find to very interesting due to the vastness that is the Warcraft lore... There are so many different storylines in the Warcraft universe, some obviously more known than others, but which ones would be the most interesting ones for the future?

It could be cool if you guys would share some specifics on what you have in mind when you say that you want a new storyline... are you talking about a continuation of existing storylines, or a restart of the Warcraft storyline overall? Also, do you have a particular storyline you would find more interesting than others?

Some people have already answered questions like these in the story forum, sometimes quite extensively, but in this thread I think a few lines will suffice. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

"Siege of Orgrimmar is one of the more melee friendly raid zones that have been added recently. The devs are looking for things melee players can excel at or perks they can have without taking tools away from ranged players."

If anything it is one of the most melee unfriendly in the game. Melee dying to one shot aoe all over the place is not friendly!

"The Timeless Isle is somewhat of a template for endgame world content going forward. There might be some more structure in the future, but the general style of content that avoids pure daily quests worked well."

"Siege of Orgrimmar is one of the more melee friendly raid zones that have been added recently. The devs are looking for things melee players can excel at or perks they can have without taking tools away from ranged players."

If anything it is one of the most melee unfriendly in the game. Melee dying to one shot aoe all over the place is not friendly!

Dunno what you understand by "melee frendy" , it doesnt mean that as melee you jsut tuneol boss and dont care about anything SoO is better raid for melee thaen preavious but tis not perfect , presonal done 10/14 HC(10) with 3 melee in group so dont see your problem

Well done. You'd probably be more progressed with less melee.

Which is the point, not that its IMPOSSIBLE but that you're handicapping yourself by taking melee DPS. The only real benefits they have over casters is slightly better armour and avoidance - and so few fights benefit from that. Infact the only ones that do are fights like Dark Animus or when bosses do large amounts of unavoidable physical damage like Morchok.

If you're going to argue that, then I have nothing else to say.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Salech

Which is what a game should be about what else is there to do if you can't aspire to something?.

Getting timed exclusive mounts isn't aspiring to something though, is it? Its being fortunate enough to get something while its available that required zero effort.

If in 6.0 they decide to go with the 5.4 Timeless Isle and use the template of 5.0 dailies, it will not be worth playing. 5.0 dailies were such a pain mainly because factions were gated and it was a Golden Lotus grind fest until Revered. I wouldn't have minded the dailies so much if I was able to choose which factions I can do my dailies for among all of them and not just GL.

Maybe if they let the players choose which faction they want to work on and gate it from there it might work. It would certainly add a variety to end game flow especially if there were special exalted quests for the faction you chose first and only first.

I don't know why Timeless Isle is so bad. I do agree it has a small shelf life, but its only real purpose is to help your alts gear up faster. Its only a daily hub away from being Isle of Quel'Danas. Also, template means bare-bones structure. I think (hope) they plan on using this sort of end game tool and building on it, perhaps by adding a daily hub or contested world pvp objectives.

In my opinion, I think WoW needs to be more eventful in the open world and I'm not talking about holiday shit. I mean bosses spawning in random places, in cities, objects spawning that need multiple player coordination to destroy, etc. I'm talking BC right before WotLK came out. That sorta thing implemented with the new tools and technology they have could be so good.

I'm not sure if you watched the interview but it was implied for the levelling process. Rather than being stuck on rails doing questing the entire time if you find a cave or a sunken ship there would be something cool inside.

The Timeless Isle is somewhat of a template for endgame world content going forward. There might be some more structure in the future, but the general style of content that avoids pure daily quests worked well.

I hope they are kidding. I much more prefer 5.1 daily-lore-style patch then timeless-boredom isle. Instead of any lore (why is Emperor spirit there? Why does he hate Yungol? Who is Ordos anyway? - yes, I can read about it on wowpedia, etc, but there should be lore in-game) they presented us with hours of brainless grind with one-shoting mobs.

I admit, I was not a great fan of Isle of Thunder dailies or Dominance Offensive ones but I much more preferred to do them then to kill the same mobs over and over and over again for countless of hours for no particular reason other then that they give "rep" with Yungol hating old emperor ghost.

I mean, I prefer actual content then sandbox zone where your only goal is to kill anything in sight.

Once I'm done with emperor rep I will never go back there ever again. Simply because the boredom beats other (non-raid wise) mop patches ten times or even more. I really hope they'll rethink their statement.

"The Gnome race didn't exist when the original WoW cinematic was being worked on, which is why they didn't appear in it. There hasn't been a good opportunity to showcase gnomes in a cinematic since then."

The problem with so-called "endgame" for people who have some free time outside the raid is that you quickly run out of things to do. I want lore, I want something else then mindless grind. Why not make both - grinding and/or dailies? So people would choose what they want?

Its more so the very unfriendly targeting and AoE effects around the bosses, I dont care if we have jobs to do as melee, thats great, it makes me feel better about my spot and I agree that the simple "This ability does not target melee" is a bad solution. But there are so many abilities that will just one shot us for simply being in melee range or severely disrupt our ability to do damage.

First 4 bosses arent to bad. Theres nothing that really gimps us to bad. Target switching and the constant moving on protectors can be a bit tiresome but overall its not a huge deal and the add on Sha I just ignore all together.

Galakras, watch them cleaves, sometimes can be hard to see with all the ground effects. Target of fireball will often render you useless. Small hitbox is fun.

Dark Shaman - GTFO. I got asked why I cant just run forward with the tanks during Toxic Stream by our raid leader last week. I wanted to put my face into the desk.

Nazgrim - Ill just run over to this add, then try and run back to the banner then run back to this add, then run back oh theres a shaman, Ill just oh I cant do anything cause theres a guy whirlwinding on the boss, great.

Malkorok - I love getting yelled at for not getting a ball thirty thousand yards away due to the tiny as fuck hitbox.

I think they should expand on the Lorewalkers end-game, it takes an hour flying around to get exalted with them, and I LOVED watching the in-game "cinematic" story mode that Cho gives you, they are well made, and interested.

They could tie them in more than just flying around clicking a scroll in XYZ, either way, I want more "story time", a lot of room to extend and improve on that next xpac.

Also, a carbon copy of Timeless isle would suck, they need to add SOME daily quests in that area in my opinion, it's easy anyway and they know it, just don't make them a requirement. I also kind of like adding new factions to areas like that if they give awesome rewards, a lot of people don't like grinds, but when done right it's not too bad, just make the rewards worth it, and the time to get exalted reasonable, cosmetic items, pets and mounts are best from factions, not gear, then it doesn't make them seem like a requirement either.

I'm not putting what I'd like it to be, I'm putting it how I think they'd get least complaints, I sort of like a grind now and again, as long as it's worth it, relevant, and interesting.

It is an odd statement indeed. My guild struggles if we bring more then one melee - and usually we prefer to have none at all.

Let's look at each of the fights:

Immersius - melee struggle to spread out enough to avoid the whirlpools, and avoiding swirl is much more difficult.
Protectors - other then the mind sear spell, its not too bad.
Norushan - so much AoE damage killing the big adds.
Sha of Pride - makes prisons awkward, not to mention having to run off to kill the big add.
Galakaras - fine for most of the fight, but right at the end it SUCKS for melee who have to run through the raid to spread out the fireball damage.
Iron Juggernaut - huge pain in the ass when being chased by bore mines, huge dps loss during seige pulse.
Dark Shaman - massive liability when the oozes spawn.
Nazgrim - having to run around after adds, one of which whirlwinds your face off? Not fun.
Malkorok - due to his tiny hitbox, melee are hopeless for helping absorb the void zones. And then stacking in front of the boss = getting parried loads. Urgh.
Spoils - prone to sudden deaths due to AoE. Massive dps loss when dropping bombs.
Thok - excellent if you can prolong phase one for ages. Utter joke in phase two, unless you're really living on the edge and just praying you're not next on the target list.
Blackfuse - might be okay on this fight. But I imagine they suck on the assembly line.
Paragons - no thanks.
Garrosh - won't be able to kill corrupted weapons at all. Or engineers. Shaman will require lots of running around. Overall horrible.

There's not one situation where I'd willingly take a melee over a ranged. Not one. And that sucks.

Bosses need larger hit boxes for non-tanks (might be complicated to program) or melee needs a little extra 'range' to do their attacks (even if its an extra yard that would solve many issues).

Lets see what you did wrong.

Immersius - Melee doesnt need to strugle about anything, boss has a huge hitbox and you can drop puddles so close you will never run out of space. For range it can get harder when boss is low on HP since it takes time to cast spells. Killing adds is EZ
Protectors - Melee/ranged friendly fight.
Norushan - nothing wrong with this fight.
Sha of Pride - Melee doesnt need to run and kill the big add, range can do that, one prison can be done by tanks so its EZ fight
Galakaras - So running a bit is hard? Have you played this game before MoP?.
Iron Juggernaut - So? Again bit of running is hard? You can place the boss so that the pule doesnt throw you so much....
Dark Shaman - The boss that spawns the oozes stands still, one tank can move the other boss and be save, There are a lot off CC that you can do to them and they will die in 4-5sec or less.
Nazgrim - So? running to kill an add is hard. I bet you enjoy Patchwerk like fights....
Malkorok - There is no need for melee to absorb them at all, You have ranged + healers that are spread out...
Spoils - AoE death never happened, if you have problem you are not killing the right ones. Bombs are not the issue, you can remove them in few sec So no, not at all a massive dps loss.
Thok - For melee EZ fight during standing phase due to non being interrupted, littile running is hard? Also there is an add you can help get killed
Blackfuse - Line isnt a problem at all, and tbh i love the fight. one of the easiest fights in SoO....
Paragons - 2 boring, but not that hard if you have a decent group....
Garrosh - Any caster can kill the engineer, im soloing them as moonkin in 2-3sec or less ( 10man ), rogues can kill them, hunters can kill them... Shamans are not the problem if they get hit by wheel. Fun fight and moderate hard...

Immersius - Melee doesnt need to strugle about anything, boss has a huge hitbox and you can drop puddles so close you will never run out of space. For range it can get harder when boss is low on HP since it takes time to cast spells. Killing adds is EZ
Protectors - Melee/ranged friendly fight.
Norushan - nothing wrong with this fight.
Sha of Pride - Melee doesnt need to run and kill the big add, range can do that, one prison can be done by tanks so its EZ fight
Galakaras - So running a bit is hard? Have you played this game before MoP?.
Iron Juggernaut - So? Again bit of running is hard? You can place the boss so that the pule doesnt throw you so much....
Dark Shaman - The boss that spawns the oozes stands still, one tank can move the other boss and be save, There are a lot off CC that you can do to them and they will die in 4-5sec or less.
Nazgrim - So? running to kill an add is hard. I bet you enjoy Patchwerk like fights....
Malkorok - There is no need for melee to absorb them at all, You have ranged + healers that are spread out...
Spoils - AoE death never happened, if you have problem you are not killing the right ones. Bombs are not the issue, you can remove them in few sec So no, not at all a massive dps loss.
Thok - For melee EZ fight during standing phase due to non being interrupted, littile running is hard? Also there is an add you can help get killed
Blackfuse - Line isnt a problem at all, and tbh i love the fight. one of the easiest fights in SoO....
Paragons - 2 boring, but not that hard if you have a decent group....
Garrosh - Any caster can kill the engineer, im soloing them as moonkin in 2-3sec or less ( 10man ), rogues can kill them, hunters can kill them... Shamans are not the problem if they get hit by wheel. Fun fight and moderate hard...

So L2P

This, "melee friendly" does not mean you want melee to do the job, quite the opposite, it means the melee have the easy role.

This, "melee friendly" does not mean you want melee to do the job, quite the opposite, it means the melee have the easy role.

No its means that its not that hard. On many boss fights in SoO melee just needs to stand and watch out. But ppl are crying since then need to move on Shamans fight.... Why not make all bosses like a dummy and we win...